Marks of Memory
by Ozium Actys
Summary: Namine's been leaving her mark since she learned how to make the needles dance under her fingers but Roxas never wanted to scar his skin until he realized that sometimes a tattoo is just a reminder of how things used to be. Character death.


**Author's Notes: Okay, so it's rushed and strange and sad and stream of consciousness-y but it was floating through my head pretty darn relentlessly for the last two months and it is that one day a year when bad writing is more or less forgiven in the name of undying love (at least for me it is). So here, have some angst and some love and of course a few tattoos. Because there's nothing like a little bit of hidden ink to get your heart stirring.**

Axel was the first of course. On a Friday night so late that the sun was coming up he was the first to declare that Namine was worth risking his skin for and with uneasy eyes they laughed the way friends do when they don't believe you because you're always stupid when you haven't slept since last Tuesday. And when the dawn crept into day and he blinked bleary eyes shut against the light of realization they warned him that this time he should back down. They warned him that what his mother always told him was right all along and they reminded him that he wanted to be somebody, could be somebody, would be somebody but not anymore.

And even Namine, who in the night had eyes like whirlpools, told him that she wouldn't let him give his dream for hers but in the morning he had eyes like needles and she could never resist anything with a point so he already knew she was lost.

Axel always knew exactly what everyone wanted him to say, always knew exactly how to say it so they couldn't quite have what they wanted and only Roxas could see that in the way his eyes slipped behind his lids like sheathing a sword that you are never quite ready to put away. So only the blonde was not surprised when three weeks later there were bandages under Axel's eyes and he was spending 8 hours a day trying to see past the gauze. Only he knew that a yes from the redhead was a maybe until he figured out how to get what he wanted and only he didn't drop his jaw to the floor when Namine walked in like she hadn't just burned up any hope the boy had of ever getting the job of his dreams.

It was months before Roxas stopped thinking of the teardrops as a second set of eyes, always waiting for him to screw things up so badly that he couldn't drag them back to where they should be. Months before Namine was sitting slumped up against their couch stained with last year's Chinese New Year getting charcoal all over the hand she was supposed to be holding chopsticks in. And it was Sora's fault really, because he just jumped on the couch without telling anyone the way he always did and Demyx ended up spilling his water all over the poor girl and in the half mad laughter and typical mullet-haired panic that followed he ended up with that ever present sketchbook in his hands and this confused look on his face like he had never understood how lines like that could end up on paper.

Of course Namine was quick to mention that she had never expected anything to come of it and of course Axel was quick to point out that Zexion was sure to like him better with some ink on him and of course Roxas was sure to cuff him upside the head while Namine blushed like her whole mind had just been barbecued. And maybe nobody thought anything of it because the boy with the lyrics on his tongue never mentioned what he thought one way or another and maybe it was the crappy anime they had thrown on the crappy television that distracted them, but one explosion is much like the next so it was Roxas, of course, who saw the look in his eyes.

It didn't seem like a pattern when half a year later he had swirling lyrics carved into him, just the way Demyx was, always forgetting to mention the important things because his mind was caught in song lyrics wound so tight that they were cutting off the circulation to whole chunks of his memory. And maybe only Demyx knew what he meant when he said that he could get lost in a tidal wave of sound but Roxas could guess by the look he gave Zexion when the blue-haired boy told him it looked pretty okay.

They were older after that but when your best friend is a pyromaniac the years slip by so fast you stop counting on anything except your twin brother finally getting laid so one heck of a December night he poured so much vodka into the punch that Riku had his shirt off before the clock struck starlight. And maybe he shouldn't have poured himself a cup because it was usually Roxas who noticed when Namine started scratching at her hands like they weren't quite covered in skin they couldn't reach, but even honors students can forget how to breathe in anything but the vodka-scented fire of a best friend's tongue so he might have slipped out of his familial ties a little too quickly to notice that the rope was trailing out the door, and in the morning he was a little preoccupied with pulling red hair into ponytails over curdled-colored porcelain.

It wasn't until he was brave enough to let the shades curl up like dying leaves that he remembered his phone was right where he had left it in the refrigerator (it always seems like a good idea at the time) at the exact same moment that Sora realized just exactly what he'd done last night. It was only the iceberg attached to his ear that kept Roxas from doing a victory dance right in front of the eggs he was almost burning until his other half mentioned that he'd woken up with more than dark marks on his neck.

Fifteen minutes later a groggy redhead walked in on the pair in a somewhat compromising position and Roxas had to interrupt his stuttering brother to say that it was just a pimple, nothing to worry about because he knew that there are some pictures that are worth keeping a thousand words to yourself, even the tiny little Victorian keys you weren't expecting to love.

It took him thirteen terrible puns that sent red lightning across Sora's face to realize that Namine knew and a thirty minute fight with her to grudgingly admit that she hadn't known that Sora was drunk when he all but begged her to sculpt the scar he carried so gracefully.

It was a running joke after Riku got one that she was slowly corrupting the lot of them but nobody laughed when Zexion finally mentioned that he'd had his since last Christmas when he spent all his money carving the music of science into himself the only way he hadn't already. It was Roxas who finally broke down the gelatin-flavored air and asked him to show it off because Demyx seemed like maybe he'd got his tongue caught on the smug look on his face but living with a guy who couldn't let things go can make you understand a shake of the head faster than addition so the smirk was wiped off pretty quickly when he started dragging out the truth behind the knowledge.

Silence never quite settled on those thrumming needles, but a thousand tiny butterflies on the ankles of girls just old enough to sign for it themselves never made anyone into an artist and only Roxas could tell that all that scratching at the sketchbook was a lifelong infuriation with her inability to carve her way under his skin. He knew she wouldn't ask for it though, knew that people came to her on their own terms, with a vision of who they could be if they gave her a chance and he had always been too busy seeing red to ever know what he should look like so he spent years pretending that he hadn't caught Axel murmuring over her shoulder and tracing smudges into the page.

And by that summer, when the sun decided it was fed up with fighting off clouds and just threw it's white hot knuckles against any bare skin you left in range, Roxas knew that Axel was dying to show him what they'd made but there was always another flea market where Kairi found another dress she needed like a hole in the head and another trip to the ice cream shop on the corner where Tidus would have been building up his arm strength if he didn't already have biceps like a rhinoceros. So he kept his eyes fixed on the dribbling sea salt creation in front of him and tried not to wonder if there were eyes on him, at least, most of the time. He had spent years perfecting the art of watching in milliseconds, like a flipbook in slow motion that's missing some of the pages, so he saw the redhead move out of the corner of his eye and later he would tell everyone that he heard the truck out of the corner of his ear and even in the fog of disbelief Zexion would remind him that ears didn't have corners as if that absolved him of the crime of not quite screaming fast enough.

The world, it turns out, does not slow down in moments of pure loss, does not freeze to let you have one last look at your best friend. The world, it turns out, keeps pace in exactly the same way regardless of where you are or who you're with or what is about to happen. Roxas remembered this, remembered that Sora would say it happened in slow motion and Demyx would say it happened in fast forward and remembered that both of them were wrong because he also remembered the exactly one second of contact that Axel's hand had with his heart, restarting it before it had time to skip a beat and he knew that if the world was waiting for an opportune moment to switch up its timing, that was it.

Zexion was the only one suspicious enough not to believe that Roxas had stumbled out of the way exactly enough so that the speeding vehicle just nipped his elbow, but it was illogical to assume that the boy who hadn't even turned to look back, who hadn't even stopped laughing, would have a good enough grasp of the situation to shove his best friend out of the way, and Zexion didn't believe in the illogical.

Roxas did. Illogical was the way your life didn't really flash before your eyes until you'd already lost it. Illogical was the fact that you had worn your third best pair of jeans to watch your friend die and if you were going to ruin a good pair of jeans for that they ought to have been your best. Illogical was the thought that the blood was never going to come out of your hair, even as you heard the 206 cracking sounds as four tires left their scrawling message across the skeleton of a boy you would never again watch throw up on a Sunday morning. And when he looked up, from the pool of Axel's life. When the policemen finally dragged him past the caution tape he hadn't seen them bring, he could see that Namine believed in it too.

Love, he later wrote, is illogical. Because you know, from the start, that you can't have forever, but somehow it still comes as a surprise when last night's prayer for tomorrow finally doesn't come true. But it was a while before he wrote anything, before he even remembered what language was for. There were no words when Namine drove him home. Not his home, but her home. The home she kept in a tiny beat up shop with framed black and white photographs trying to cover the stains on the walls. There were no words for the feeling of needles on his skin or the way the gentle hum of the ink flowing into him settled his mind back into telling him how to breathe. But Namine's pictures were always worth ten thousand words anyway, so it came as no surprise that she didn't argue with the request he hadn't made, just set to work and silently handed him her mirror when she had slid the final smudges out of place.

It was exactly what he hadn't wanted, and exactly what he'd always needed. A complex entanglement of keys and spiked circles that reminded him of spiked hair, just enough red streaking through the black to make you second-guess the darkness. And if you looked close enough you could see the words of a poem he had yet to write, etched in such tiny script that it took him months to realize they were even there.

This is love. It tears you up from the inside out and in the end you're still on your knees, covered in your own pain, begging for one more day.


End file.
